


don't forget who's watching you

by cryptidhearted



Category: Marble Hornets
Genre: Assault, Attempted Murder, Blood and Gore, Canonical Character Death, Character Study, M/M, Murder, Unreliable Narrator, Violence, shipping is all background
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-24
Updated: 2019-06-24
Packaged: 2020-05-19 05:41:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,192
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19350643
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cryptidhearted/pseuds/cryptidhearted
Summary: “Sorry about all that. I’m just feeling a little… self-conscious, I guess.” Alex’s apology comes easily, like it matters, somehow. Like it’s going to be alright in the first place and he doesn’t have a thing to worry about, because he doesn’t. Because he doesn’t. Because he doesn’t. The static in the viewfinder makes Sarah’s face stand out against the window. “I’ve been working on Marble Hornets since freshman year of high school, I just want it to be good.”





	don't forget who's watching you

**Author's Note:**

> me: i'll write a simple character study to figure out alex's character  
> me, 14k words later: oh no
> 
> alternate title "all my friends are dead", alternate alternate title "alex kralie does five whole murders"  
> warnings: strangulation, bludgeoning, some body horror, unreliable narrator, assault, mentions of self harm
> 
> [find me on tumblr!](https://cryptidhearted.tumblr.com/)

INTERIOR. SARAH’S HOUSE. NIGHT.

 

Alex Kralie stifles his yawn with one hand over his mouth, looking down at the recording camera and the script on the table next to it with a furrow in his brow. Notes are scribbled over it in sharpie and pencil both, black ink and barely-there markings of graphite putting together what he quite considers to be his masterpiece. Not shabby for a work he started in high school, really, and is still adding on from moment to moment—

Idly, he taps the pencil against the paper and grins down at the script.

“Remind me where this scene is in the movie again?” Sarah speaks up from her position by the window and Alex looks up from the script and the camera set on the table in order to look up at her.

“Near the end. You need your motivation again?” He’s grinning through his words and she’s grinning back at him, the toothy smile of an amateur actress who knows she’s going to make it big someday. Kralie picks up the camera, moving away from the table as he drops the pencil and towards the tripod propped up against the wall. They’re done going over the script, rehearsal’s handled, time to start the show.

Center stage: Sarah, her dark hair pulled over her shoulder, her makeup done with a delicate expert’s touch, her smile slightly crooked and expression slightly frustrated.

Alex has always thought she was pretty. It works, considering her role in the film as an abandoned lover with a new life. Exactly what he was looking for, and she delivers near every time.

“I could use it.” She comments, tapping pink-painted nails on the table. It’ll be a continuity error, but Alex is hopeful enough that that might be missed by anybody scrutinizing his movie. The analysts will forgive something like that, he imagines—or maybe it wasn’t a problem anyway. That was Jay’s job. Jay would handle continuity errors like a surgeon. He missed the tone in her voice that’s almost wary. She expects him to snap, but he’s in a good mood.

Alex clears his throat. His grin grows wider. Time to share the vision, as he always enjoys doing.

“Near the end,” He repeats, kneeling to set up the tripod at an angle that places her to one edge of the frame, her chair tilted away from the table and towards the window. He places his camera atop it and thinks of church steeples. “Brian just called you and said he wanted to make amends with you. And this is—this is the guy who you haven’t heard from for four years, who broke up with you and disappeared off the face of the planet, like that’s a rational, reasonable thing to do.” He loves his protagonist. Why shouldn’t he? But, he has to admit, Brian-in-the-story isn’t the best sort of fellow. Selfish, he thinks. Self-centered, a little. Lost, maybe. “You’ve already told him you’ve moved on. That you’ve gotten over him, maybe even started another relationship, learned something about yourself—that part’s up to you.” He likes the idea of people seeing themselves in his characters. Likes the idea of someone looking up to a capable woman like Sarah, who knows what she wants, who’s happy as is.

He shifts, adjusting the angle until the camera’s in the position he wants it to be. Peering through the viewfinder, he frames the shot, puts Sarah against the window with her hands in her lap—should they be on the table? Crossed in front of her?

“You really liked him when you two were together—you know, childhood friends and all that—but you’re not sure if you want to go back to that. So you’re wary,” He continues, looking past the camera to the woman in the chair and giving a slight nod of approval. The right shot. “You’re wary, but he’s a good guy. You know he’s a good guy. So you’re gonna give him a chance, hoping you could maybe be friends again. It’s a call back to the—”

“The playground scene, and the one where Tim and Brian are in my house, right?” Sarah intones, and Alex can’t help but feel a bursting sense of pride in his chest.

“Yeah. Yeah, exactly. You did pay attention to my script, huh?”

“It’s not as bad as they’re making fun of you for.” And she smiles, and Alex is smugly pleased with himself.

“Thanks.”

“You going to feed me Brian’s lines?”

“Yeah. Got your phone still?”

Sarah’s reply is to lift the prop-phone that was one of Jay’s old broken ones, rolling her eyes slightly as she does; but she’s still smiling, relaxed and comfortable and Alex feels good, too, feels good at being able to have the chance to put the pieces in place to get one of the most emotional scenes in the film down and ready for the first time since he conceived it. She’s got the acting chops. She’ll go far. She’ll go far.

“Alright.” Alex sits back on his haunches when he’s satisfied with the angle, brushing off his knees and moving to stand up. He pushes his glasses up, moves back to the table in order to pick up his script and Sarah’s. “I don’t really want to have any cuts, here, so the shot has to be perfect as is. Ready?”

“Ready when you are.” Her reply comes with a nod and she sits back in the chair.

“Start from the place where he calls you, I’ll put a ringtone in when it’s done.” Kralie steps back behind the camera, sets the shot again, inhales and holds it—“Whenever you’re ready.” The pencil’s still on the table. Who cares. It doesn’t matter that much, really. Neither does the fact the camera will pick up his voice as he says Brian’s lines. Her shots will be intercut with his, so it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter.

“Hello?”

“Hey. Sarah. It’s Brian.”

“I thought I told you I wasn’t waiting around for you anymore.”

“I know, I know. I just…”

“Just what?”

“Just wanted to talk to you.”

“Talk to me about what, Brian?”

“I wanted to talk to you the way we used to, Sarah. When we were little, and it was just the three of us against the world.”

“It’s a little late for that.”

“I was hoping it might not be.”

Sarah sighs, closes her eyes, looks towards the window. Alex grins again behind the camera, giving a slow, approving nod.

Static makes the viewfinder flicker. He doesn’t pay it any mind.

“Look, Brian, I don’t—”

“We don’t have to try and be in a relationship again. We don’t have to do anything again. I know you and Tim are mad at me, and I’m sorry. I just… I just was hoping I could be your friend again.”

There’s a long pause of silence and Kralie feels tension in his chest, feels his jaw tighten as he fixates on her, on the hair drawn over her shoulder as she looks towards the window. The angle’s perfect. So, so perfect. This is the shot he wanted.

“… Fine.” Sarah sighs through her nose. “Tomorrow afternoon. We can get coffee, and we can talk. And that’s it.”

“Yeah. Thank you. I’ll… come pick you up?”

“If you’re late, I’m calling it off and telling Tim to take me to coffee instead.”

“You got it.”

With that, Sarah ‘hangs up the phone’, placing it on the table in front of her. There’s a long pause of silence where neither of them even come close to saying a word, before her tense positioning relaxes and she looks back towards Alex.

“How was that?”

Alex breathes out, like he’d been holding it for longer than he thought.

“It was perfect. You’re a great actress, Sarah.”

A blush spreads across her cheeks and she shrugs in response, brushing hair out of her face.

“You know, I like it better when you’re complimenting me. A lot better than getting yelled at.”

“Sorry about all that. I’m just feeling a little… self-conscious, I guess.” Alex’s apology comes easily, like it matters, somehow. Like it’s going to be alright in the first place and he doesn’t have a thing to worry about, because he doesn’t. Because he doesn’t. Because he doesn’t. The static in the viewfinder makes Sarah’s face stand out against the window. “I’ve been working on _Marble Hornets_ since freshman year of high school, I just want it to be good.”

“It is good.” Sarah assures him, and his reflex tells him she’s only saying it to be nice. “Definitely better than some other garbage out there.”

“Thanks.” And he grins at her, smaller now, feels a tension gathering in his chest as he looks down to the distortion in the viewfinder.

“Do we have anything else to do tonight?” A gentle inquiry and Alex doesn’t have to look at her face to know what her expression is, imagines the same smile with some wariness, maybe, some hesitancy, because the air in the room has changed and he is more than certain she’s felt it too.

Enter stage right: static and sound.

“Yeah,” He replies, kneeling behind the camera again. “A few more shots and then I’ll head home and let you do your thing.”

“Sure thing, mister director. What’s the shots?”

Alex closes his eyes as he bows his head behind the camera, breathes in slowly and out just as slowly. He can feel it behind him, a halo of static and an extended hand, or maybe it’s behind _her,_ lurking in the woods as his hand closes tighter around the script in his hand, crumpling paper gently. Gently. Gently. He doesn’t want to scare her. He just wants to get this done.

“I just need you to look out the window. The same sort of feeling, y’know, the… pensive, thoughtful, kind of focused feeling. Don’t—” He clears his throat. “Don’t talk this time, I want to just have the sound of the house around it.”

“You got it.” Sarah replies, and she shifts in the seat to make herself comfortable enough to look out the window. Alex opens his eyes to see her cross one leg over the other, furrows his brows at the sight of bare feet. Was she wearing shoes in the last scene? Would it matter? Did anybody ever see her feet? Jay would handle that. Jay’s a master at continuity, that’s why he’s the script supervisor. He wishes, for one painful instant, that he were here. Sarah leans back against the chair and places her hands in her lap, staring out the window towards the woods behind her house. Alex debates on telling her to change her position, lean over the chair a little bit more, look wistful the way a kid looks wistful when they’re not allowed to play outside with their friends because _that_ would give the shot he wants a bit more, but it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter.

please don’t make me do this

“How’s this?” She asks.

“It’s good.” He replies. “Hold that for a couple shots.” please don’t make me do this

He keeps his head bowed, clutches onto the camera, and then rises to his feet in a steady motion. A compulsion in the back of his mind, a pressure in the center of his palms as his hands shake. please don’t make me do this Alex checks the angle again, scratching at the back of his head for a moment. please don’t make me do this please don’t make me do this please don’t make me do this

He steps nearer behind her without so much of a thought, knowing he’s ruined his shot by stepping into it because his character’s not supposed to be here, his character’s a stupid throwaway former coworker of Brian’s and here he is wrapping his hands around Sarah’s throat when she gasps. It doesn’t fit the narrative as he squeezes, as he feels her hands go to his wrists and hears what must be his real name instead of the character’s name and he focuses intently on the fact that he knows how to make sure she can’t breathe without him removing his hands, which he isn’t going to do.

She struggles because she’s scared. He’s scared, too, but he knows this is what has to be done as he squeezes, keeps squeezing, squeezes. He’s glad he can’t see her face in this position, the reflection distorted as he refuses to look at it. It lingers out of the corner of his eye and he thinks, is the camera going to catch that? Or will their bodies be in the way?

Sarah can’t overpower him, though. He hates to be the cliché but she’s weaker than him, or else he’s just gotten stronger since things changed, and she stops breathing eventually. He keeps squeezing until she does, and then for a little while after, just in case.

Alex looks into the window.

He sees Sarah’s face, distorted still, her head held up by the way his fingers wrap around her neck and her eyes still wide in a placid expression of fear and shock. He sees himself behind her, his glasses reflecting the light from the kitchen and the emptiness on his face. He sees, beyond the two of them, the thing in the forest that watches him facelessly, its head tilted to one side in a way that Alex can never be sure on if it’s thoughtful or approval or interest or—something. Something. Something.

There’s no understanding a deity, he supposes.

Whatever the thing is doing, it’s offering him guidance.

Alex pulls his hands away from Sarah’s throat very gently, placing his fingers at the right spot (Brian showed him once, he thinks) to detect a pulse. He expects a fluttering bird, maybe, or hopes for something still strong like the thudding of a percussive instrument. forgive me forgive me forgive me He feels nothing, instead, an emptiness and a coldness on her skin.

He thinks for a moment of how good of an actress she was. Maybe she could be holding her breath. He wouldn’t be surprised if there was some sort of way to fake that, and he’s not exactly the best at identifying things outside of what he learned from the necessary research for writing something worth reading, worth filming, worth doing, please don’t make me do this. Alex shifts his weight back onto his heels and lets go of her when there is no answer from her body.

He sighs, gently, and looks towards the camera for a moment.

The angle won’t be right. He’ll have been in front of her for most of the shot, he thinks, so nobody will see that it was her unless they see the tape before then, or—after. The thing outside the window is still offering him guidance from where it lurks in the gathering shadows at the edge of the woods. The guidance is words in his head, a tug in his chest that pulls him towards the forest. The angle won’t be right. He should’ve moved the camera first, maybe, or been more careful about where he put it in the first place. Kralie’s not the star, Sarah is, she deserves the limelight.

He kneels in front of the chair with some hesitance. There are bruises around her pale throat. He put them there, like a necklace. Like part of her costume. Static rings in his ears.

Her eyes are still open. He sees himself and the camera light reflected in them. Nausea gathers in the back of his throat.

Alex reaches forward, putting her arms around his shoulders with some hesitancy and then lifting her from the chair. She’s not heavy. She barely weighs anything. Was she taking care of herself? Was she comfortable? He hoists her up and her head lolls against his shoulder and he could pretend for an instant that he’s just carrying her to bed, that she’s going to sleep and will wake up somewhere better and that thing will leave her alone, now, leave her alone and so leave him alone and she’ll be safe, safe and happy, safe and comfortable and safe and safe and safe and please don’t make me do this

He faces his head away to avoid coughing in her face as he picks up the camera with his stray hand, struggling to support her and the camera both but knowing there’s no leaving the camera behind. He can’t. It’s like a security blanket when clutched in his hand, the red light of RECORDING a comforting beacon that tells him he’s alright. He’s going to be alright. Sarah’s head tilts back some, and Alex adjusts again in order to keep it against his shoulder.

EXTERIOR. SARAH’S HOUSE – THE WOODS. NIGHT.

The kitchen has a door right out into the backyard, and so Alex moves as gingerly as he can to keep himself from dropping either her or the camera. The deity outside isn’t there anymore, but its presence is still suffocating, like a pressure in his lungs keeping him from inhaling too deeply. Something in his chest cavity preventing his lungs from expanding, stones in his ribcage. The door creaks when he opens it and again when the weight of it closes it behind him. He wishes he’d thought to find her keys; it’d be better to lock the door when he left, lest somebody get inside who wasn’t supposed to be—she lived alone, didn’t she? Did she have a roommate? Siblings? Seth would come and check in on her eventually, he guesses, since they were dating, but that didn’t matter. That wasn’t anything at all.

Alex kneels carefully to set the camera down facing the forest and to adjust his grip on Sarah, his now-free hand going to the back of her head to hold it against his shoulder. The presence grows stronger as he stands and moves nearer to the woods. He dares not cross the threshold into the forest itself, but he knows the demand and the requirement as much as he knows anything else; that is to say, not at all.

He is gentle as he lays her down at the edge of the yawning woods, helping her sit in the grass and then lowering her gradually down to rest her head. He kneels above her for a moment, reaching to brush her hair out of her face and trying hard to ignore the fact that her eyes are still open, staring into the empty darkness of the neighborhood and the woods above the two of them and he feels his eyes burn, feels his hands shake. He should reach to close them. Help her. Make sure she doesn’t have to see. Turn the lights off and cut the camera. Help her. Help her. Help her.

He’s drooling some by the time he stands up, feels the presence draw nearer like it’s parting the woods. The shadows gather and he can’t see anymore as he turns his back on her, stumbling away and—compelled to kneel, compelled to his knees, bent double as he vomits into the dewy grass and feels himself sob, feels his chest heave and feels himself cough and cough and cough, spits drool and bile into the dirt and crawls towards the camera, curls into himself and clutches at his own skull as the pressure inside it grows more and more intense until he’s certain his head will _burst_ —

And then, all at once, it stops, and the presence does nothing to him, and Alex is left struggling to breathe and trying to pick up the pieces enough to uncurl and pick up the camera and move because he can’t be here anymore, he can’t just stay put and act like nothing happened but he has to, he has to, he has to, he has to.

Crying like a child with his face in the grass.

The presence shifts towards him.

Exit stage left.

\---

EXTERIOR. ABANDONED BUILDING. NIGHT.

Location scouting isn’t the fun part of the job, and Kralie gets the feeling Seth agrees with that.

The drive out here had been annoying enough, but then comes the fact it’s already gotten dark by the time they found where they were supposed to go, and the end result is having to do their scouting in the dark because Seth’s got to show up to a family outing tomorrow afternoon and they’ll have to drive back first thing in the morning, since they took Alex’s car.

There’s a spark of annoyance in the back of his head. He doesn’t dislike Seth, exactly. Seth’s a smart guy, certainly someone Alex trusts to assist in filming his masterpiece. He can name three different camera projects of Seth’s that he’s admired and tried to replicate, of course—Seth is a good guy. Except lately every time he’s around him, Kralie feels like he spends more time gritting his teeth than wanting to hear his friend say anything. And now this. This car problem. Why hadn’t they come separately? He needs Brian here to do any decent work, anyway, so this is just— detraction. Annoyance. Frustration.

His teeth are going to be ground down to nubs at this rate.

“This the place?”

“Yeah. C’mon.”

They approach the building together, Alex glancing back at Seth. It’s his camera in the other man’s hands and Alex is still trying to figure out if he’s okay with that.

“We’ll be quick.” Alex continues. “Got your flashlight?”

“Yeah. Let’s go.”

INTERIOR. ABANDONED BUILDING – FIRST FLOOR. NIGHT.

The building is three stories tall. It’s supposed to be an old hospital, he thinks, some abandoned building that burned down or got abandoned and overgrown or else was just set dressing behind something else that got left behind when the crew packed up. There’s a basement, he’s pretty sure, and he’d heard, from what he can’t remember, that there was roof access somewhere. Kralie and Seth walk together into the yawning doorway, flashlights like stagelights fixating on graffiti decorating the empty walls.

Incomprehensible mixes of words and symbols that he knows automatically are out of place for the mood he wants, and more pop out at him every time he moves the flashlight.

“This… isn’t great.” Kralie sighs through his nose. Seth, behind him, snorts.

“I’m guessing the first floor’s the one where all the garbage is. People don’t want to go anywhere spooky.” Seth has shifted, toying with the camera and pointing his flashlight at the floor instead of at the walls as Alex scans their surroundings when they walk.

“Of course.” Annoyance again, heat in his blood as he scowls, glancing over his shoulder. “Let’s find some stairs, then. Is the camera okay?”

“It’s acting a little weird. Picture’s not coming through clearly. I’ll fix it.” He hears the sound through the dark of Seth fidgeting with a piece of the camera, frowns at the sight of the recording light turned off. It shouldn’t be. The camera needs to stay on. It has to be on at all times, he charged it enough for that, he’s got enough empty tapes stashed in the satchel at his hip wrapped up in scribbled on pieces of his script.

Don’t break my fucking camera.

“Sure thing.” Alex answers, instead.

They walk, mostly in silence, Alex shining his flashlight on their surroundings while Seth works on the camera. He needs something that would pass for a school, and this building… isn’t quite it. If he were making a medical drama or a horror movie, probably; he can picture patients meandering empty hallways, some long-recovered protagonist setting foot in an abandoned building he might have been responsible for the destruction of, shuffling and hobbling ghosts following old pathways they walked when they were still alive. That isn’t what he needs. He needs somewhere he can picture kids, middle school kids, high school at the oldest if he absolutely had to deal with it, meandering the hallways and wrapping themselves up in their childhood problems like those were the big problems. He needs somewhere where he can picture innocence masquerading as something serious and heavy, somewhere where the nostalgia would be strong enough to explain why his protagonist would come back here to think. To think about better days, about time gone by, about how good things used to be when he was a kid and how all good must eventually come to an end.

Instead he gets a dick drawing in messy spray paint and some fucker named Derek tagging a wall with nothing more creative than screaming into the void with “I was here.”

The anger pulses through his head again, joining a forming headache behind his eyes. A pressure at the back of his head.

“Found a stairwell over here.” Seth calls, from a little ways down the hallway and Alex stops in his tracks when he realizes he’s gone too far forward. “I think it goes down, though?”

“Basement?”

“Looks like it.”

“We found it before we found the stairs up, so I guess we’re checking out the basement.”

“Great.”

“You scared, Seth?”

“No. I’m not scared of going into the basement of a spooky abandoned building in the dark, when we’re technically trespassing and might run into a meth-head or something.”

“I’ll go first, then.” Alex snorts, stepping past Seth to shine his flashlight into the open doorway. He can see the graffiti still, the spray paint trickling down the stairwell and fading towards the landing, like anyone who came here had changed their mind halfway through but still wanted to leave their mark on the crumbling building. The stairs creak as he moves downwards and Alex ignores it, shining the flashlight to stop himself from tripping.

INTERIOR. ABANDONED BUILDING – BASEMENT. NIGHT.

He’s tempted to just turn the flashlight off, really. His headache is starting to get intense, something nasty at the back of his head and—something like a hand on his shoulder. The dark seems a little more inviting than he’d like to admit in this moment. The light hurts his eyes, and the headache feels like spindly fingers spreading inside his brain to press messy fingerprints against the inside of his skull.

Seth steps just as cautiously behind him until they make it down to the basement.

Enter stage left: pressure in his head. Presence in his head.

“Is it recording now?” Alex questions, stopping where he is to turn and look at Seth through the dark. There’s no point in continuing the location scouting if the camera’s not gonna pick up anything he needs to remember, and he’s this close to taking the camera from this useless bastard to handle it himself anyway.

“Yeah.” Seth answers, holding the camera up as he flicks the switch to night vision. “Should be fine now.”

“Good. Let’s go.”

It is, in fact, a basement. He’s not surprised, and he still knows in the back of his head as the spindly fingers stroke at the inside of his skull that this isn’t going to work. Brian-in-the-story has no reason to come here. He’s not making a horror movie and Brian-in-the-story isn’t going to suddenly do a complete 180 and become a villain. He’s a sympathetic protagonist. A hurting protagonist. Somebody that people can understand and empathize with and like. A horror movie setting is wrong. He needs nostalgia.

Seth steps on something that cracks behind him. It sends a pulse of pain through Alex’s head and he grits his teeth together again, resisting the urge to snap.

Maintenance, he thinks. They must have stored things down here, or it was a boiler room, or—something? He’s not sure exactly what the purpose of it is. The basement seems like one big wide space, bigger than he would’ve thought considering the building above them. He can hear it shifting and settling as something digs its fingers into the back of his eyes and Seth kicks something aside with a statement that Alex doesn’t hear.

Center stage: static and sound.

“Alex?”

Seth’s voice breaks through the silence and there’s a tone of wariness that tells him it might be something more serious than their joking. He doesn’t say anything, just turns around to look at Seth through the recording camera, invitation enough for the other man to explain himself. Like the sound of his name in his voice didn’t already agitate him enough.

“There’s something over here.” Seth explains, awkwardly, gesturing. Alex puts his flashlight on the wall he points at.

Red.

Paint?

Blood.

Like someone had been pushed there, Alex thinks, the back of their skull cracks open and smears brains on the outside of the wall because they hit the concrete too hard. If it was a hospital above, could they still survive it? Did it happen when the hospital wasn’t here? He pictures his protagonist with his hands wrapped around somebody’s throat and shoving and his own fingers twitch, slightly, he bares his teeth against the sudden spike of pain and frustration through him. No. No, that’s wrong, that’s wrong, that’s wrong, that’s not what it’s supposed to be like and he doesn’t know why the morbid thoughts are coming so easily.

“We should leave.” Seth stammers the words.

Shut the fuck up already.

Alex reaches to touch the red on the concrete, running his fingers across it. Long dry.

“It’s fine. It’s dry. We probably won’t use anything down here.”

“So we’re leaving?”

“Not yet.”

“Alex, c’mon—”

He keeps walking.

How often did people die in hospitals? All the time, right? Enough ghosts to fill school buses and bicycles. Sickness as a natural part of life. People died because people die. So how often did they die in hospitals? With fanfare of monitors and voices. Car crashes and pushes and it would be so easy to break someone’s skull. Fragile. Fragile. Fragile. One hard shove against the wall, he thinks. One hard ram with the car. One sudden stomp of his boot. Would it be that easy? Yes, the presence in his skull offers, so easy. Too easy.

Too easy.

He can hear Seth talking behind him again, pointing out another patch of blood and Alex fills in the story himself, pictures gunshots in a basement and sound ringing off of the darkness. The presence emerges from his head in order to stand behind him and he breathes out slow as he stops. This is dangerous. This is dangerous. This is dangerous. This is wrong, and bad, and dangerous. They need to go home. He wants to go home, to curl up and wrap himself up in his blankets in his bed and go to sleep under the papers and sleep off this headache, sleep off this sickness, sleep off this pain. It’ll pass. It’ll pass.

“We’re leaving.” Alex says. His voice feels faraway, like something else moves his jaw for him, but he knows it’s only him. It’s always been only him. It isn’t anything else at all. “C’mon.”

Seth gives a word of agreement that Alex still can’t make out. He turns around. He steps on something again and mutters something about the camera and the rage fills him, the anger pulses through him hot and heavy and sharp in his chest when he breathes in and he pictures his skull cracking to let something out—

He doesn’t mean to hit Seth in the back of the head so hard. It just happens. His fist collides with the man’s head and Seth’s head jerks forward and he yelps like his dog did when Alex stepped on its paw, the same kind of accident, the same kind of incidental action he didn’t _mean_ to do. The camera clatters from his hand when Seth hits the ground, and for a moment he doesn’t realize what he’s done to begin with.

“Seth,” He starts, like it might be an apology.

So easy. Too easy. Is his camera still recording? Did the bastard dropping it break it? He better not have. That thing was expensive, irreplaceable, he needs it, needs it more than he needs this useless piece of shit holding it, needs it more than he needs this uncooperative jackass, needs it needs it needs it needs it needs it to keep recording

Seth’s on his hands and knees. The camera’s red light is off.

Alex stomps on his hand without thinking. There’s the sound of a scream and static in his ears, sound bouncing around on the inside of his skull like the thing in his head is playing catch with it.

He kicks, hard, and Seth is on the ground.

He walks forward, and looks down, and his eyes won’t focus, exactly. Like smudges on the lenses of his glasses. Like the camera won’t focus and the picture won’t come through clear, like the darkness is blurred together when he lifts his flashlight.

I’m sorry, he wants to say.

It’s for your own good, he wants to say.

He lifts the flashlight in both hands. It’s heavy. He’s used it to defend himself before. Rural Alabama. Risk of home invasions were rare, but better safe than sorry. Better safe than sorry. Better safe than sorry.

Did the hospital always do preventative care, too?

He kneels, raises his hands, inhales deeply—

 

INTERIOR. ALEX’S CAR. MORNING.

He wishes he’d stop crying.

 

\---

EXTERIOR. RAILWAY. AFTERNOON.

“Sorry about it being just the two of us.” Tim speaks up for the first time since they’d gotten out of the car, in a way that Alex guesses is him finally finding a way to broach the subject. They’re walking along the railroad towards the hospital, the easiest pathway to the building. Tim is slightly behind him, fidgeting with the spare camera that Alex had given him. Behind the scenes, he’d said, but it was mostly just an attempt to get Tim to focus on something other than making those stupid puppy dog eyes at Brian every time he was practicing his lines. “Brian wasn’t feeling great. Bad headache. I offered to reschedule but he told me to just go, figured it’d be easier on both of us that way.”

“Yeah, he texted me. Should be fine.” Alex replies. He doesn’t know what to think of Tim. He knows Tim as attached to Brian at the hip. He can count on one hand the amount of times he’s been around Tim without Jay or Brian present, and doesn’t even have to count how many times they’ve actually talked to each other for anything other than correction on line delivery. They’re not friends, exactly. They know each other, sort of.

“Are we doing any filming today?”

“Not today. Can’t really do anything without Brian.”

“Oh. Right.”

Tim knows the way better than Alex does. There’s an awkwardness in his tone that Alex isn’t sure how he should feel about. It’s not like they dislike each other. Tim’s a good guy who’s pretty good at making music and even if he’s a beginner he’s not the _worst_ actor Alex has ever had to deal with. The most he can complain about is the cigarette smell that clings to him every time he’s in the room, but even then, that’s easy to ignore.

“How far away is it?” Alex asks, listening to the stones of the railway crunch under their feet. He doesn’t get what Brian sees in him, though. Brian Thomas, the kind of guy who could get anybody he wanted because of that charming smile, and he settles for Tim Wright, this kid who can barely look him in the eye during a conversation?

There’s been improvement. He guesses he should stop judging.

“Not too much further.” Tim replies, gesturing ahead. He’s looking through the viewfinder as they walk, like a child who’s never had the chance to get to play with a camera before. He’s had it for a week by now, and that still hasn’t changed. “You can probably see it if you look over the trees.” The joke is laid at his feet. Alex is tall. He gets it. He doesn’t laugh.

The three-story building rises in the distance and they lapse back into silence.

 

INTERIOR. ABANDONED BUILDING. DAY.

It’s a different story in the daylight.

“There’s three floors,” Tim explains behind him as Alex stops in front of the building. “Basement and roof access. Bottom floor might be kinda bad for the graffiti but I’m guessing there’s a place in here somewhere that could pass for a school, if that’s what you’re still looking for.”

There’s a pause of silence, Alex more or less ignoring Tim as they step into the shade of the first floor. The graffiti is easier to see in the sunshine too, but not even slightly more worth admiring. For every piece that might be interesting there’s a disaster of color splattered over it, ruining the picture and making it even harder for anything decent to stand out.

Tim coughs behind him.

“What do you think?”

Alex doesn’t respond. He listens as Tim fidgets with the camera strap.

Kralie adjusts the grip on his own camera and shrugs dismissively, eyeing the static in the viewfinder with some hesitancy, a wary tension gathering in his chest as he breathes out.

“Let’s take a look around.” Alex suggests. “Second floor, maybe?”

“Yeah.” Tim brightens up when he speaks, like the acknowledgement is an improvement. “I know where the stairs are.” He seems off, too, Alex realizes, somewhere between eager and uncomfortable. Is it his fault? Is he not comfortable around him? His teeth dig into his tongue. He might’ve yelled a little too much lately. Been a little too short-tempered. Brian had tried to be nice about it, but between the way Tim tended to snap back and the frustration present in the two of them, Alex is guessing they’re a little tired of it. He doesn’t blame them. Still, for all the tension that’s draped over Alex’s shoulders, when he watches Tim walk he can see it too, footsteps that are both cautious and familiar all at once.

How many times has he been here? He’d never said.

Alex is leading despite Tim pointing it out to him, but the dichotomy doesn’t exactly seem like a problem. It may as well be the blind leading the blind, for all he knows; Tim seems like the sort of person to lie to make himself look good. Urban decay is cool. He wants to fit in with his new friends. Right?

“It’s better up here,” Tim says as they ascend the steps together. Like the trip downwards, Alex can identify the places the graffiti ‘artists’ gave up because they got uncomfortable. “Since I’m guessing you don’t want ‘Nancy hearts Jeff’ in your abandoned school scene or whatever.”

He’s right. It’d ruin the mood, Alex notes. This place is supposed to be pensive, reflective, nostalgic. Graffiti isn’t going to suit what he’s looking for in the slightest. On the second floor it doesn’t seem so bad, and Alex is slightly relieved—this building might work. Might work. Might work. Might work.

A pressure at the back of his skull makes him sigh through his nose as he steps over a fallen door and towards the sunlight at the end of the hallway.

Tim coughs again behind him, into his sleeve, the grating sound slightly muffled. Is he sick? Is he breathing the dust too deeply? Should he be concerned? Alex thinks in passing of the other night at Brian’s house, listening to Tim hack up his lungs in the hallway and sounding progressively worse the more they went through the evening. Brian had shown up after being missing in action half the night just in time to tell Tim to go upstairs and sleep it off at his place instead of driving home. Did they sleep?

Why does Brian even like this kid?

They reach a landing that looks like it could’ve been multiple rooms spread out, foundation and crackling, crumbling walls evidence enough that there had been more standing here when the building had been functional. As they step through it together Alex can reconstruct the hallway in his head, identify the places the doors should have been and the walls that divide room from room. He can point out what he guesses might have been a lobby or a common area or something, places vending machines in one side of it and

Another cough. Alex rolls his eyes and heads towards a window. He can feel Tim’s camera pointed haphazardly in his direction—for somebody minoring in photography, you’d think he’d be a little bit better at setting up a fucking shot.

The sunlight isn’t warm as he steps into it, looking past the trees and furrowing his brows at the sight of something in the distance.

“Is there another building over there?” He questions, placing his hands on the windowsill. No more broken glass, but the light is giving him a bit of a headache.

“Er, yeah.” Tim’s voice is muffled in a way that tells Alex his mouth is still against his sleeve and even if he’s more comfortable around him, Alex is doubting he’s feeling that right now. A part of him thinks he should feel bad for that. He doesn’t, though. He doesn’t really have it in him to care as Tim continues speaking. “There’s another part of the hospital over there, I don’t really know what it was used for.”

Is he telling the truth?

“I don’t really think I feel up to going to another place today, though, if you don’t mind.” Tim continues, and Alex grits his teeth.

“I do mind, actually. We’re already out here. C’mon, I wanna go see it.” He turns around as if to move past Tim, catches a glimpse of the other man on his own camera and eyes the discoloration in the viewfinder with the sensation of rocks in the pit of his stomach.

“I don’t want to.” Tim says, almost petulant, and Alex is really wondering why he’s digging in his heels but—“Let’s just keep looking around here, there’s got to be something in this building you like. This place isn’t exactly small.”

“It’s not going to pass for a school. This looks like a hospital.”

“We can check out the third floor? The stairs are over there.”

“Fine. Let’s go. I’ll check out the other building with Seth some other time if you’re that against it.”

He’s relenting to see how Tim reacts. The relief is obvious. Tim’s not saying something he should’ve, Alex thinks, or maybe that’s just the pressure of slender fingers against the back of his head telling him. Paranoia. Suspicion.

He doesn’t _like_ this guy, why would someone like Brian _settle_ for this kind of useless garbage?

Kralie is still leading as they head towards the third floor but by then things break.

It comes in fits and starts, in bits and pieces: he can hear Tim talking back and forth, can sort of hear himself answering as he steps over debris and dust and growing plants. Can feel the presence in his head become a presence on the other side of the room again, some pressure that feels like twine wrapped around his throat and squeezing. It’s dangerous. It’s dangerous. There’s a danger here.

Tim coughs again and it sounds like static to him, sounds like empty noise that shouldn’t be there in the first place and Alex knows painfully quickly that he has to do. It’s to protect. It’s to help. Tim is hiding something from him, he has to be, some secret about the other building that he doesn’t want to go to because Alex knows it’s the right place. It’s where he has to be. Where he has to go. Where he has to bring him. There is his answer.

He stops with his face against the wall on one side of the open space of the third floor and can feel something standing in front of him. It is both inside of his head and outside of it as he breathes deep, feels something prickling at the back of his neck.

Preventative care.

There is no running from this presence, he knows, and there is no bowing to it either-- he won’t. He refuses to. He refuses to. He refuses to.

Stage left: Tim with his back to the rest of the room and the camera placed on the windowsill.

Alex exhales slowly and turns around, kneeling long enough to pick a piece of rebar up from the dust.

His head isn’t working right anymore, he thinks.

His head isn’t working right anymore because he doesn’t feel any guilt when he steps up behind Tim and strikes him in the back of the skull with a piece of rusty rebar. He doesn’t feel any guilt or any grief, just the sensation of concern and relief all at once, this knowledge that if he can get them away from this _thing_ that’s grown out of him then maybe everything will be alright. He can get them out of the way and away from all of this and they’ll be safe, be safe, be safe, be safe.

He’s standing over a body again, for the third time, and he can tell Tim isn’t unconscious yet because he grunts, digs his fingers into the dirt under him and coughs and coughs and coughs and Alex thinks he’s supposed to feel bad now. The audience would expect him to feel bad by now. So why doesn’t he?

The clattering sound of a camera falling, and Alex turns away from the man on the ground. He’ll have to find something else; they didn’t come at night, so he doesn’t have his flashlight. He’ll need a pipe. Something heavier. In passing he wishes he’d thought to bring the gun he’d bought last week, but he thinks that would have been noticed.

Exit, pursued by presence—

Bits and pieces.

It doesn’t work.

His head doesn’t work anymore.

INTERIOR. ABANDONED BUILDING. DAY.

No, that’s not right, it isn’t—

EXTERIOR. ABANDONED BUILDING. DAY.

Closer, closer, closer, but still wrong, still off, his details are all muddled together, like his outline’s been ripped up and stitched back together and his story’s still somehow supposed to make sense off of it

EXTERIOR. FOREST. NIGHT.

How long has he known how to hunt this way? Like something’s leading him along like he can smell blood in the air like he can fixate on every broken twig like he can follow, stage directions, someone else pulling the strings and a refusal, a certainty, he is in control, he is in control, He is in control, He is in control, He is in control

he

is

in

control

INTERIOR. BURNED HOSPITAL. NIGHT.

He’s not making a horror movie. Tim’s got the camera when he crosses the threshold into the ruined building and hears glass crunch underfoot. He knows that the other is still here and he knows that if he doesn’t find him, his new friend’s fate is only going to be worse and worse than if he ran off on his own. Alex Kralie knows how to stage a scene:

Fig. 1 is himself, walking into the empty building and stepping carefully over the glass with a heavy metal pipe in one hand and the hefty flashlight in the other, still splattered around where his hand goes with blood.

Fig. 2 is the distant sound of coughing echoing somewhere in the building, a prey animal huddled somewhere like it isn’t going to be found. Tim still has his camera. Kralie should have thought to buy a chest-mounted one, he’s lost the one he brought with him--

He’s bitten his tongue. He tastes blood.

It isn’t a deterrent.

Fig. 3 is something that moves behind him and stays perfectly still at the same time, like an albatross around his neck weighing him down as his flashlight moves across fire-scorched walls and debris. Center stage with arms stretched out in either direction and head tilted to one side, pain in a circle around his forehead and in the center of his palms and making him stumble like there are nails in his ankles and and and and and and and

noise.

Noise behind him.

He turns the flashlight, hears Tim’s retreating footsteps and knows the direction he’s meant to go in because there is something guiding him along, something weighing him down and showing him in the same instant like Kralie’s meant to do something about it but also is meant to simply lie down in the dirt and stay there.

The pipe weighs his arm down and drags along the floor. He hears him coughing, hears the sound of two hands covering a mouth and trying to muffle it as the prey animal he’s cornered in this building does everything in its power to keep itself from being found. He will, though. Alex knows too well where to go and what to stay away from in the same instant.

The doorway at the end of the hall—

The thing around his throat pulling him to the ground and he stumbles towards it, on his knees—

Hands and knees—

Coughing, and coughing, and coughing, spitting blood onto the ground—

Something snarls near his ear.

Oh.

 

 

INTERIOR. ALEX’S CAR. MORNING.

With his face pressed against his steering wheel, he’s not really sure what he’s going to tell Brian when he’s conscious enough to drive home and talk to him and Jay about what’s left of the shooting schedule. He has a notebook full of plans that have been scribbled over in pencil and sharpie that he’s not sharing anymore and a headache pulsing behind his eyes that has been there for as long as he can remember, at this point.

There are still things he needs Brian for to finish the movie. Tim won’t be missed that much, he thinks, or if he is it will only be Brian that notices his absence. And Alex has a set of explanations equipped anyways, the same way he had for Sarah, the same way for Seth.

Sarah had a family emergency and had to rush off, she’ll be back in a week or so from what she told me. You must not have gotten her text.

Seth’s sick. Told me it was super infectious. I told him to stay home and sleep it off, we’ll keep filming when he gets back.

Tim must have flaked on us or something, it’s okay. We can do his scenes when he shows up. You should know where he went, right, Brian?

Alex closes his eyes against the sunlight and breathes in, breathes out, breathes in, breathes out. He doesn’t feel like he can take a deep enough breath, like there’s something blocking his chest and if he inhales too deeply his lungs will be scraped up or simply burst inside his ribcage. He pulls his forehead against the steering wheel and sits back, rubbing at his eyes and sitting back in his chair.

Quietly, he reaches for his phone.

It rings, once, twice;

“Hello?”

“Hey, Jay.”

“Alex! Good morning. I thought you were gonna call me last night.”

“Meant to. Didn’t have any service.”

“Good to hear from you now though. How’s location scouting?”

“Boring. I think it’ll work, though. I’m probably gonna bring Brian out here this weekend.”

“Cool. Can I come?”

“Nah, we’re not gonna need the script for it.”

“Oh. Okay. You on your way back?”

“Yeah. I’m gonna drop Tim off at his apartment and head home.”

“You okay? You sound a little rough.”

“Just tired. I’ll be home in a couple hours.”

“I love you. Drive safe! See you when you get back.”

“I will.  Love you too.”

He looks in silence to the camera on the passenger seat as he hangs up, placing his phone down beside it and silently twisting the key in the ignition.

He’s not a very good liar, he supposes.

\---

EXTERIOR. RAILWAY. DAY.

“Are you recording right now?”

“Yeah. Just some B-Roll stuff.”

Brian is standing off to one side behind Alex, his hands in his jacket pockets as he settles. The grass here is too tall to be comfortable and he knows that both of them are pretty glad they wore jeans for this; Alex has done him the favor of telling him to wear decent boots, given all the broken glass and debris they’re gonna have to walk over to get the set of shots he wants.

Alex has it all listed in a little notebook, the exact shots and angles he wants of Brian for the sake of transitionary shots or just to build the atmosphere. The abandoned school is a crux of the tale, after all; where Brian-in-the-story wanders for the sake of reflection and self-realization, introspection and problem solving. The climax of the story will happen somewhere else but the school is where the emotional climax is supposed to be, where the protagonist well and truly grows up and learns about himself and Alex can picture it now as he grins down at his camera zoomed in on the rusty tracks. Poetic cinema. He can’t wait to talk about it to people who will actually enjoy listening to him.

“I’m gonna set up here so you can’t see my shadow. You just walk along the tracks here, slowly, look like—thoughtful.”

“Okie doke.”

“I’ll let you know when you’re out of the frame. You can walk on the edge if you want.”

Brian steps onto the tracks and Alex watches him balance with a twitch of a smile. It’s a little awkward as he tries to find his footing but he straightens up, and Alex sets up the shot, angled towards the trees and greenery beyond the railway tracks. Brian is just out of frame by this angle and Alex makes sure his shadow isn’t in the shot and catches a glimpse of something standing in the trees—

“Whenever you’re ready.”

“Can I talk now?”

“Yeah. I’m just gonna put some music over it.”

Brian turns his face back towards the forward direction of the railroad and away from Alex as he walks. It’s only slightly unsteady. Kralie keeps the camera as still as he can as Brian walks across the frame, the extended shadow of his friend creating a silhouette off into the distance, a darkness ahead of Brian-in-the-story as he confronts his inner demons.

Nice.

“That’s good.”

Alex lowers the camera, Brian keeps his leisurely pace to come back to his side, and the two of them set off to walk back towards the building in the distance that has been listed as his shooting location for the day.

“How’re you feeling?” Alex tosses the question out to start the conversation instead of walking in silence and Brian snorts in response.

“Better. Sorry for cancelling on you last weekend, I just couldn’t get out of bed.” There’s something that Kralie guesses is apology, and he shrugs.

“Yeah, Tim told me you had a pretty bad headache. We didn’t really have any shooting we could do without you, anyway, and dragging you out here with a migraine would’ve been a dick move.”

“Migraine is putting it real nicely… Have you heard from him recently, by the way? Tim, I mean.”

“You haven’t?” Alex raises a brow, with some surprise. “You’re like the only person on set he ever talks to besides Jay.”

“Not for a while.” Brian says, slowly, and Alex catches the concern in his face—

“No, sorry.”

Lifts his camera.

Change the subject.

“I think I could get a good shot here,” Alex says, taking a few steps away from Brian as their pace slows. “Hold on.”

And this gets Brian’s concern to shift into a grin, somewhat sheepish. The angle is a good one, of course, as Alex adjusts the camera to get the right level of focus. Brian’s light brown hair is almost blond in the sunlight and Kralie’s pleased to note that he shaved this morning, so continuity will be fine even with Jay not being here to keep a closer eye on it. It wouldn’t be a problem, of course, but Alex does want to try and avoid _some_ clichés when everything is said and done… Brian clearly gets the shot that Alex is going for, and there’s a smug sense of pleasure to realize that as he tilts his chin up and looks directly into the camera with a chuckle.

“I’m just gonna stare off into the distance like I don’t care.” He says, lazily, turning his face away from the camera and off into the distance. True to his word, he looks like he doesn’t care. Alex momentarily allows himself a sense of satisfaction to know his star actor’s at least good at his job if nobody else but him and Jay are.

Alex lowers the camera again.

“You working on anything interesting lately?”

“Studying for finals mostly. Enough time off to work on your movie and a couple code books.” Brian scratches at the back of his head as his posture relaxes. “I’d say it’s just for fun, but, y’know, cryptography’s the only class I’ve had the easiest A of my life in. So it’s only a little bit for fun.”

“You’re such a nerd.”

“Says the man with a camera and a poetic vision.”

“Don’t be rude.”

Brian laughs and Alex sighs, intentionally theatrically, as they near the building.

It’s not any less uncomfortable to be around in the daylight, but Alex doesn’t show it as they step inside. The shade of the building is cooler than the surrounding forest, which is saying something since they’re both wearing jackets anyway. A breeze moves through the open hallway, sending the sound of leaves scraping against concrete as the wind tosses them aside ringing through his ears.

“You sure we should be here?” Brian’s voice beside him draws Alex’s attention as he lifts his camera, and his reply is a roll of his eyes.

“It’s fine, Brian. There’s nobody here.”

“We should get the shots quick, then.” There’s something in his voice that Kralie has to work to identify. Brian’s on edge. Like he knows something’s not quite right and Alex supposes he can’t really blame him that as he lifts his camera. The place doesn’t feel welcoming. There’s an air around it on it’s own that says they should turn around and leave, be it the graffiti in the open hallway or the breeze through rooms that should have been occupied or the scorch marks decorating each and every wall that hasn’t been painted over or cracked.

“We’ll be fast.” Alex promises.

He has a little notebook in his back pocket of the shots he wanted to get of Brian while they were here, but he doesn’t want to pull it out in front of him. The haphazardly scribbled trees and symbols won’t make sense to him the way they do to Alex and he’s not about to try and explain himself to someone who won’t be glad to hear any part of it. Brian’s a psychology major. Alex isn’t here to be analyzed. Besides, he knows it by memory anyway.

Shot one: Brian walking down the hallway at the same leisurely pace at the railway, purposeless and lonely, isolated and empty after realizing he had abandoned his friends and loved ones and seeking something, looking for help or an answer or—

“Am I supposed to be silent?”

God damnit.

“You were.”

“My bad.”

Shot two: Brian looking out at the window towards the forest, examining the trees, trying to make sense of the whole of his life as it comes down to the empty building symbolizing the ruin of his childhood and okay, the angle on the sun isn’t entirely right, and Brian’s squinting a little, but it’s fine. Good enough.

“Okay. Let’s go.”

Shot three: Brian standing in front of a wall of peeling and scorched paint while the sun shines through a window at his back, his hands at his side and looking directly forward for the sake of—

“What’s this shot supposed to mean?” Brian’s picking at the peeling paint.

Alex sighs and shuts his eyes. It’s the wind bothering him. The way the cold is still seeping in under his jacket and the way he can feel something small inside his head reaching out with claws to scrape at the inside of his skull again, like something sharp is digging into the back of his eyes and trying to pull them inward. It’s not Brian bothering him.

They keep walking, and Alex can tell that Brian’s nervous. That he doesn’t want to be here. He doesn’t blame him. He doesn’t really want to be here, either, but his options aren’t particularly expansive anymore in the way that they used to be. His world has shrunken down to the knowledge that he is sick and he is making his friends sick and he wants to apologize without having the words or the ability to explain why he knows that in the first place. But he’s fixing it. He’s fixing it. He’s fixing it.

Final shot:

The empty hallway opens up into the forest, and Alex thinks there might have been a wall of windows here at some point. There are multiple doors into empty, dilapidated rooms and Alex stops in front of one, handing Brian the tripod to let him struggle with it while he gathers up his thoughts and tries to organize how he wants it to look. The camera in his hand is pointed incidentally at Brian the whole while, and there is a strip of color over the middle part of it, blue distortion making the other man’s shirt match his jacket.

Alex takes a few steps back to consider the framing, then breathes out. It’s just the wind. It’s just a headache. It’s just a presence in the back of his mind, knowing.

Brian sets the tripod down and Alex is the one to adjust it, placing the camera on top and holding it steady.

“Okay, over here.” He says, gesturing towards the door, and Brian leans against it.

“Are you really sure we should be here?” Brian questions again, caution in his voice. Does he know? Does he know? Kralie doesn’t think so. He’s fairly certain Brian doesn’t know anything, but he’s been wrong before. Maybe he does know. Maybe he doesn’t. God, his head hurts. His actor glances over his shoulder towards the end of the hallway more than once before he looks back to Alex and the uncertain expression is almost pitiful, or should be pitiful, or will be pitiful in retrospect. He doesn’t really know.

“It’s fine, Brian.”

“I just don’t want anyone to show up and like—get us arrested or something.” There’s a hesitancy in his tone and in his voice.

“We won’t get arrested. This is the last shot, and then we’ll head out.”

“Alright—Alright.”

Alex tilts the camera to get Brian in the shot, to the far left. The tripod keeps the camera steadier than his shaking hands will, and that’s why he’d brought it to begin with.

“Lean up against the door like that, sorta put your head against it, I want you to look like… Thoughtful, sorta lost, like you’re trying to figure things out.”

“You want my hands in my pockets?”

“Yeah, keep your hands in your pockets. Just need a couple shots of this.” Alex breathes in, breathes out, places his hands on the camera again to make sure the shot is right. “Alright, rolling.”

Brian coughs.

Brian coughs once, and then again, and Alex feels the urge gathering in the back of his throat, too, but it’s easier for him to ignore it than it is for Brian. He is still as Brian shifts away from the door and coughs into his elbow, the ugly sort of chesty cough that is usually a precursor to a more serious illness. Pneumonia? Bronchitis? Did Tim give him something?

Is it the place itself?

“Good take.”

“Sorry.”

Brian moves back into the positioning and Alex watches, halfway wishing he’d had some better form of direction to give as the man’s temple rests against the old door and then

Something happens, he supposes.

A gust of wind or an act of god or something happens and Alex wakes up standing in the empty hallway with a pipe in his hand and the familiar sound of someone coughing in the distance. The sound is different from Brian and something in the back of his mind supplies quickly enough that it’s Tim, Tim Wright still here somewhere, and surprise does it’s best to emerge from his heart but the emotion simply doesn’t make it to the starting line. He clutches the pipe tighter until his knuckles go white around it.

That’s a trap set. An irresistible trap, too, because he knows that Brian hasn’t seen or heard from Tim in a week and concern alone will make him hesitate. Will make him want to stop and help and get the dog’s foot out of the bear trap. Two birds with one stone, except instead of a stone and a slingshot Alex Kralie is lucky enough to have a heavy metal pipe. He wants his camera back. He feels uncomfortable without it in his hand, and the pipe isn’t a good enough replacement.

A noise joins the coughing, the sound of Brian’s voice calling his name. He feels like he’s floating. Static and noise at center stage of his mind and blurring his vision as the thing behind him helps him breathe and he knows where to go without having to give it so much as a second thought. His feet carry him in the right direction of Brian’s voice and the sound of an animal wheezing and coughing, and the thing behind him moves in front of him moves away from him moves inside of him.

He shouldn’t interrupt them. It would be rude to interrupt them. They haven’t seen each other in more than a week and he knows it would hurt if he were separated from Jay for so long, so surely it’s no different for Brian and Tim. He shouldn’t interrupt them.

The thing doesn’t give him much of a chance, though, and he knows that if he doesn’t act then it will, and he doesn’t want either of his friends to suffer at all.

By the time he enters the doorway Tim is gone, or maybe wasn’t there at all in the first place, and Brian is lying on the floor with blood trickling from the corner of his mouth and his eyes glazed over. There is still a slow rise and fall of his chest, but Alex knows very well that he isn’t conscious anymore. Touching it would do that to you. Or maybe it was the pipe, since that isn’t in his hand anymore.

He kneels, hooking his arms under Brian’s armpits. He’s still very handsome, he thinks, with his brown hair almost blond in the sunlight through the window. Blood on his face seems to suit him. Better than it did for Seth, at least. Alex straightens up, catching a glimpse of his camera on the floor in the room—Brian always was the thoughtful sort, it’s fair enough that he’d be kind enough to bring it with him when he went looking. He begins to drag the almost-just-a-body of his friend out into the hallway and sees rather than hears it when Brian gives a noise somewhere between a moan and a plea.

Alex is very gentle in laying him down in the hallway, because he doesn’t want to make it worse. He knows Brian has to be hurting by now, and he doesn’t want to make it worse. He doesn’t want to make it worse. He doesn’t want to make it worse. He doesn’t want to make it worse.

He steps cautiously over him, careful not to put his weight on any fingers or any part of his friend’s body, and steps back through the doorway into the room in order to lean down and pick up his camera.

By the time he steps out again, Brian is gone, and Alex thinks he should be angry. He should be hurt. He should feel sick or upset. But he doesn’t. He doesn’t feel anything. Nothing in the slightest.

Should he feel bad about that?

\---

EXTERIOR. RESTAURANT. DAY. INDETERMINATE AMOUNT OF TIME LATER—

Jay and Tim at the restaurant Jay and Alex were going to have lunch at, and it is incongruent in Alex’s mind, a conversation that happens and doesn’t happen at the exact same time because he feels so muddled on the inside of his skull that nothing makes sense in the first place anymore.

“Hey, Alex. Have you seen Brian? I haven’t heard from him since you two went out to film.”

“Yeah, sorry. I guess he didn’t tell you.” Why are you still here? It left you behind? Help him. Help him. Help him. Get him out of here.

“Didn’t tell me what?”

“He wanted to break up with you a while ago and I guess he just didn’t tell you. He moved a couple days ago.”

“Oh.”

“I’m sorry to tell you. I thought he’d have said something. He told me about it a while back.” Don’t look for him. Don’t say anything. You don’t remember what happened? Were you there? Were you there? Are you blind? You were his bait, you led him there for me so I could fix things. Please get out. It’s better for you to just _go._

“Oh.”

“Sorry.” Stay away. Get away and stay away. You’ll be safe. You’ll be safe. You’ll be safe. Brian’s okay now. Don’t go looking for him.

“It’s okay.” Tim says, but it isn’t.

Tim excuses himself from the table. Exit stage right. Alex well and truly hopes he will never see him again.

\---

INTERIOR. ALEX’S HOUSE. NIGHT.

MOVING?

It’s just one box left in the empty bedroom. The rest of everything else is packed up in the back of his car or in storage and he’ll be going as soon as he can pick himself up off the floor. It’s just tapes, too. Tapes and a set of scribbled on papers. He doesn’t need to bring this but he’s packing it up anyway because he’s got to burn them. He plans to walk to the park before bed and take care of it there, burn the tapes and the cases and hope, hope, hope, hope, hope.

That’s all that’s left to be done, really. They’re all gone. Sarah, Seth, Brian, Tim. He doesn’t know where they all went anymore, exactly, but he can remember the feeling of frantic flesh under his fingers and the sound of heavy metal crushing a skull and an animal noise, an animal noise of pain and fear. He doesn’t feel anything for it, though, he thinks. No sense of grief or anger. It’s better for them this way. They’ll be safer this way. Far away from him and happy, safe and comfortable and where they belong. He helped them. He had to help them. It’s okay. It’s okay. It’s okay.

Alex picks up the camera and the box and heads to the living room, setting the camera on the windowsill pointed towards the door and tucks the box back against the door. Cardboard will still burn, he guesses, he doesn’t need to set the fire until the park.

A knock at the door sends a jolt of panic up his spine and Alex bites his tongue again, shuts his eyes, and takes a deep breath. He’s skittish. He knows who’s at the door. He just forgot how long it would take him to get here.

Jay is smiling at him when he opens the door, that familiar and welcoming smile that had made Alex like him a hell of a lot in the first place. Alex steps aside to let him into the almost entirely empty house and Jay’s voice is the first thing that breaks the silence laying over his mind like a blanket since he woke up.

“You packing up?” And the smile fades. And Alex feels his heart and his head ache in unison.

“Yeah. Moving.” He sighs, and Jay’s brows furrow in concern.

“Moving where?”

“Somewhere cheaper. Can’t afford the rent anymore.”

“You should’ve told me, I could help you out.”

“You know I don’t want to take your money, Jay.”

There’s a pause of silence where Jay’s expression of concern fixated on his face makes his eyes burn, like he’s looking too intently at the sun. He feels a hand going to his shoulder and watches from some place outside himself as Jay scoots a little closer, his head tilted and brows furrowed.

“You okay? You look like you haven’t slept.”

“I’m fine, Jay. Just had a long day.”

“Okay.” It’s caution in the other’s voice, and the hand on his shoulder shifts in order to be an arm wrapped around him, a second joining the first until Jay is embracing him tightly and Alex closes his eyes, resting his cheek on the crown of Jay’s head and lingering there for as long as he’ll allow himself to. His hands rest against Jay’s bony shoulder blades and he curls his fingers into the fabric of his hoodie and breathes deep.

The thing claws again at the inside of his skull and makes it harder to see.

“You could have at least told me you were moving, I’d have come to help you pack up.” Jay says into his shoulder and Alex stifles a laugh and shakes his head as he untangles himself from his partner’s gangly arms.

“I didn’t have that much stuff to pack in the first place. I’m pretty much done anyway.”

Jay scratches at the back of his neck and looks around at the front room, packed with a few boxes and bags and the camera in the window pointed towards the door. He’s looking for something, Alex realizes slowly, the thoughts coming through like a creature crawling through tar.

“What about the Marble Hornets tapes? Did you pack those already?”

Alex grimaces.

“They’re in the attic, I think.”

“That’s not very good for tapes, y’know. You should store them someplace else— or, like, bring them out to your car? It would be bad if you forgot about them.”

“I don’t really want to do anything with them, Jay.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“I mean I want to get rid of them.” He says, like it’s something easy to do.

“Get rid of them?”

“Burn them.”

“Burn them?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s a little dramatic, don’t you think?” Jay chuckles, and Alex closes his eyes, pushing his glasses up. “It wasn’t that bad, surely you can do something with them?”

“I don’t want anything to do with those tapes anymore, Jay. I really don’t.”

“Can I take them, then? Make something with all that work you put in?”

His reflex is to say no, but his tar-covered thoughts make his mouth form the word without any sound to join it. The bad tapes are in the box. He’d gone through all of them and made sure, picked carefully through the mess to make sure that anything that would well and truly make it obvious of what he’d done was in the cardboard box and could be disposed of quickly. That’s what the fire was for. The idea of flames sound inviting. Better to breathe smoke than to drown.

So what bad would there be in giving Jay the tapes? He wants to get rid of them anyway, so how bad would it be? He’s leaving, anyway. Transferred schools a week ago if his memory isn’t still betraying him. Wouldn’t be back here any time soon in the first place.

“Yeah.” Alex says, and regrets it in the same instant. “Sure. I can show you where they are.”

The attic door is in the hallway, and Alex doesn’t have to reach up very far to pull the string down and get the stairs. He is very aware of the fact he and Jay are no longer on camera because he wants to have it in his hand again, is desperate to have some sort of record of what’s going on around him because that would make it easier to face. He climbs up, and hears Jay shifting against the ladder behind him, looking up as he enters the attic.

“So what’s on them?”

“Hold on a second.”

The plastic bags full of tapes are stuffed in the far corner and the thing is standing beside them. It makes his headache worse, makes his vision even darker. Alex feels like a blind man as he gropes and grasps for the tapes, dragging three individual bags full to bursting of tapes towards himself and taking tentative steps when he turns around. The light is a beacon and the presence behind him stays still this time as he moves away from it. Alex says his thankful praise under his breath.

Jay takes the tapes from him with an expression of surprise, hefting the bags in his bony arms and then looking back at Alex like he doesn’t know what to think.

“That’s… a lot.”

“We did a lot of filming.”

“I didn’t think it was that much.”

“Sorry.”

“So what’s on them? A lot of forest shots and stuff?”

“You wanna make a nature documentary?”

“Maybe.”

Alex smiles. It feels too fuzzy to be real and his eyes won’t focus anymore.

“Well, thanks, Alex.” Jay says, nudging him. “I’ll put these to good use.”

“Yeah.” Alex replies, smoothly. “I just… don’t want to see them again. Please don’t bring it up.”

“Is it that bad? I thought you were making a really good movie.”

“Jay. I mean it. Please don’t bring this up to me again.”

“Okay. Okay, Alex.”

Jay fidgets with the bags and says something else and Alex feels himself respond a couple times, feels Jay kiss his cheek and feels his partner’s presence move away from him in a way that feels permanent. He doesn’t like it. He doesn’t want to go, exactly, he realizes. He wants to stay put and be with Jay. Pretend that nothing bad ever happened after he burns the last set of tapes and maybe take Jay’s offer to let him move in to his apartment a little more seriously. It would be nice to be together.

The door clicks behind him and Alex’s vision darkens further, until he can’t see anymore, until he’s left standing in the dark and aware only of Jay a distance in front of him and the presence a distance behind him. He doesn’t know where it is but when he extends his hand it wraps around the camera without him having to fumble for it.

“Hey, Jay.” Alex starts as he approaches the man’s car. Jay is putting the tapes in the backseat.

“Yeah--?”

His fist collides with his face and Alex is aware of crunching under it, a yelp as Jay stumbles back and clutches at his face and now Alex feels guilty, so guilty, disgusted and miserable and upset, nauseated and angry, angry, angry, angry. Jay stumbles and falls and Alex straddles him, hits more than once and keeps going even when he hears his name come through the bloody mess and and and and

Anger. Only anger. Unrestrained, unbelievable, unnamable anger and it’s Jay’s fault. It’s his fault. It’s all his fault. It has to be his fault because he needs a target to vent it at and scribbled papers aren’t enough, a knife pressed against his thigh isn’t enough, aggression and fury and darkness that surrounds each and every piece of him and has crawled up inside him and rotted him from the inside out and Jay is just a target, just a target, just a target, an easy target because now he’ll _know_ if he doesn’t fix it

His vision doesn’t clear and so he navigates by touch after Jay falls silent because the darkness that surrounds him will not fade. He feels the bloody mess of his face, feels breath against his fingertips and uses that to lead his hands to Jay’s shoulders. Still breathing. Still in one piece. He pulls Jay up by one shoulder and gathers him up into his arms and feels the slightest struggle, a bird’s wings fluttering against cupped hands and oh, he wants to apologize.

I’m sorry, he wants to say.

It’s for your own good, he wants to say.

Alex wraps his arms around Jay the same way they had what must surely have been only minutes ago and wishes Jay would hug him back. He feels something warm on his shoulder and doesn’t know if it’s tears or blood or drool, but Jay doesn’t say anything. Or grab onto him. These things hurt him more than they should.

He cradles Jay against him and rests his head against his, standing unsteadily. He’s still blind. The darkness swallows him and sets a pathway before him in the same instant because he knows which way he’s supposed to go as the camera dangles from his hand and Jay rests against him in a way that makes Alex think he could just be carrying him to bed. That’s all he’s doing, really. Carrying Jay to bed. Tucking him in to go to sleep, because it’s late, and the night is dangerous, and he’ll be safest if he’s asleep. That’s all it is. That’s all it is, going to sleep. He won’t be too far behind, he thinks.

Alex is unsteady on his feet but firm in his conviction, now. That’s all it is. Going to sleep. They’re not safe in the dark and he will not let Jay face the same fear that he’s enduring. He cannot see but his feet know the direction to go without him having to know. Bare feet step across the gravel driveway to his home and towards the forest behind his house, a cool breeze urging him forward and blessing his decision in the same instant. His head is tilted, lips parted in an open-mouthed kiss against Jay’s temple and he tastes blood and his guilt and feels the heat of tears down his cheeks.

He's only going to sleep.

They’ll see each other again in the morning.

One foot after the other and the weight upon his shoulders is too much, making him stumble and make it hard to walk, but he will not drop it. He will not let Jay fall because he’s asleep, now, and they’ll see each other again in the morning, and Jay has always hated it when Alex kicks him in his sleep. He’s always been a restless sleeper. He doesn’t think he sleeps anymore to begin with.

The grass is a gentle bed, welcoming and soft at the tree line, and as Alex lays Jay down he reaches forward again with cautious fingertips to find his face in the darkness. Nausea and anger and grief and sorrow and rage and fear and fear and fear. He’s sick. He’s sick and will make them sick, too. He’s only going to sleep. They’ll see each other again in the morning.

He makes to lay his head down on Jay’s chest to wait, but by the time he does he cannot make contact with him anymore. His forehead touches dewy grass instead, and he feels a presence in the back of his skull as he closes his eyes. It changes nothing. The darkness behind his eyelids is no different from the darkness of having his eyes open.

He’s only going to sleep.

They’ll see each other again in the morning.

\---

The trees on the edge of the road are lit by his headlights and he sees the faceless thing watching him every time.

He’s grown used to its presence. He’s luckier than most, he thinks, to be so near to a god without the danger that would be so very inevitable to lesser beings.

He doesn’t know, exactly, where he’s going. Doesn’t know where he wants to go, only that he has to.

Something drives him forward.

He leans into it, because he’s satisfied. Because they’re safe. Because he is no danger, now, and he can bear the burden of the weight on his shoulders alone with no trouble. It will follow him, and he will allow it to because now, now, now they will not be in danger. He can bear the weight better than they could’ve. They weren’t meant for it.

They weren’t meant for it.

The world is dark around him, and Alex Kralie doesn’t mind it much so long as it doesn’t try to claw it’s way back inside of him.


End file.
